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The Fundamentals. turned to intense hatred— ‘abhorrence” is Robertson Smith’s word—by the sternness and contempt with which the Jews spurned their proffered help in the work of reconstruction at Jerusalem, and refused to acknowledge them in any way. And yet we are asked to believe that, at this very time and in these very circumstances, the Samaritans, while hating the Jews much as Orangemen hate the Jesuits, and denouncing the whole Jewish cult as schismatical, not only accepted these Jewish books relating to that cult as the “service books” of ' their own ritual, but adopted them as their “Bible,” to the ex clusion even of the writings of their own Israelite prophets, and the venerated and sacred books which record the history of their kings. In the whole range of controversy, religious or secular, was there ever propounded a theory more utterly incredible and preposterous! ANOTHER PREPOSTEROUS POSITION. No less preposterous are the grounds on which this conclu sion is commended to us. Here is a statement of them, quoted from the standard textbook of the cult, Hasting’s “Bible Dic tionary” : “There is at least one valid ground for the conclusion that the Pentateuch was first accepted by the Samaritans after the Exile. Why was their request to be allowed to take part in the building of the second temple refused by the heads of the Jerusalem community? Very probably because the Jews were aware that the Samaritans did not as yet possess the Law- Book. It is hard to suppose that otherwise they would have met vvith this refusal. Further, anyone who, like the present writer, regards the modern, criticism of the Pentateuch as es sentially correct, has a second decisive reason for adopting the above view.” (Professor Konig’s article, “Samaritan Pen tateuch,” page 68.) Here are two “decisive reasons” for holding that “the Pen tateuch was first accepted by the Samaritans after the Exile.” First, because “very probably” it was because they had not
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